No More Apologies
by Exceeds Expectations
Summary: In which Oliver is going to meet Percy for the first time since the Battle of Hogwarts. If he doesn't murder him within minutes, he'll be doing brilliantly. /Slight Perciver. For the Quidditch League Comp.


**Challenge:** QL Competition, R2, Captain.

**Prompt**: Flying

**Pairing**: Percy Weasley/Oliver Wood

**Note**: Thank you to the most amazing person in the world, the supermegafabby Lizy for publishing this for me. She's so amazing everyone should worship her.

* * *

The feeling of slicing through the summer air, the sun beating down on his neck, the sound of rushing wind and the thump of his own pulse pounding in his head rare things Oliver Wood will never, ever grow tired of. Even now, with grief settling like a sickness in his lungs, the thrill of flying makes everything seem okay, if only for the moment.

Up here, hands clasped tight around his broom handle, zooming around and around, doing endless laps, the Battle could've happened a million years ago. It didn't, of course. It's been mere days, and Oliver has to set off soon to the school. They'd asked him to help out, but he would've volunteered anyway. How could he not help rebuild the place that had made him into the person he was today?

But today is different. Today sets a special rhythm to Oliver's heartbeat, one that allows for boiling blood and the steady pulse of pure, unadulterated rage. Today, Oliver is going to see Percy Weasley properly for the first time since their final year of school.

If he doesn't murder him within minutes, he'll be doing brilliantly.

Percy had written him the day after the Battle. _I think we should talk,_ he'd said. _If you're coming to Hogwarts, let me know. I've missed my best friend._

"Best friend, my arse," Oliver growls to the wind, turning slightly more sharply than he'd planned.

Somewhere in the distance, a church bells chimes the hour: six o'clock. Oliver slows his broom and looks out into the horizon. He'd better start flying if he's to make it there on time.

"I'll bloody kill him," he grumbles to himself, sighing loudly and setting off towards the ruins of Hogwarts.

By the time he arrives, the cool morning air has grown damp, and the clouds are threatening rain very soon. He lands out by the greenhouses, grabs his broom, and begins to trundle up towards the school. He takes in the damage as he does, every broken window and crumbling wall. There are whole towers that will need to be reconstructed. He feels a pang in his chest for Gryffindor Tower, the place he called home for so long. (And then another pang, a sharper one, for the boy he spent those years with there.)

It's Percy who finds him. This isn't how Oliver had imagined it, but Percy's nasally voice is calling out from the direction of Hagrid's hut. Oliver turns on his heel and there he is: Percy Weasley. All six foot, gangly, freckled idiot of him.

"Oliver!" he calls, striding up towards Oliver as fast as his abnormally long legs allow. "I was beginning to think you'd changed your mind."

Oliver glowers. "Ran into a patch of bad weather."

"Ah. I see," Percy muses, strolling to a stop a few feet from where Oliver stands, broom still in hand, his face like thunder. "I'm glad you're here, at any rate."

"Why did you want to see me, Percy?" The words burst from Oliver as if they are spring-loaded.

Percy just stares. A could-be confused stare, but Oliver knows better. Percy's not confused. He's resigned.

"I wanted to apologise." Uncertainty clings to his every word as he speaks. Oliver can feel it, slick and dark and staining everything.

"No, you don't," Oliver says. "You don't _want_ to apologise. You have to. Ever the politician."

Percy's head droops. He makes eye contact with the bristles on Oliver's broom. He addresses Oliver's boots when he speaks. "I didn't know you thought so little of me."

And then suddenly, as if timed, the tension coiled within Oliver snaps. With one swift move, he throws his broom aside where it hovers pathetically, and takes one warning step towards Percy, his shoulders squared.

"I fucking hated you," he rasps. "You fucking - do you even realise what you did? How many people you hurt trying to make yourself into someone _better_?" He spits the last word like it's anything but what Percy has become, the biggest insult he can find. Colour rises in his cheeks like spilled blood. "Your mum - I saw her afterwards, you know. Ran into her a few times. She was a wreck, Perce." He hates himself for how easily the nickname slips from his tongue.

"I know." His eyes fall closed as he speaks. The words are too heavy, dragging his eyelids down with misplaced grief.

"No, you don't know!" Oliver roars, coming unhinged. He feels sick suddenly, like his stomach has started chewing itself up, his hands shaking, his throat tight. "You don't fucking know what it was like, Percy, you don't fucking - you were fine! You were safe. Ministry's pet. Turned against his whole family, his friends." Percy stays very still. Oliver can see his jaw clenching. A vein throbs in his neck. "You were just what they wanted - someone desperate enough to lose everything trying to get what he wanted. Well. Look at you now, Percy. What have you got now?"

"You." He all but chokes on the word. "I have you. Or is that not why you're here?"

Oliver stills. "What?"

Percy meets his eyes for the first time. Oliver can see his blue eyes through the shine on his glasses but he wishes he couldn't. Wishes the clouds would break and the rain would blind them both. Wishes that glass held the light like a pure white blindfold; it's so hard to look him right in the eye and not feel a thousand things at once.

"You're here. I did all those things, I turned on my family, forgot my friends, worshipped the bloody Ministry even when I knew what they were doing was wrong... And you're still here." His voice drops to a half-whisper. He speaks his next words like if he says them softly enough they will pull the honesty out of Oliver with their gentle hands. "Why are you still here?"

Oliver glares. Eyes narrowing, lips drawing into a thin, white line, he shakes his head.

"This isn't about you, Percy," he says, disbelieving. It echoes strangely in the silence around them. "It's not always about you, you know. I thought you'd have learnt that by now."

"I know." Percy's hand jerks forward as if to grab Oliver's wrist, almost of its own accord, but he catches himself, brings his hand back to rest steadily at his side. "I didn't mean that, Oliver. I'm sorry. I just meant - "

"You think I'm here out of some sick loyalty to you," Oliver breathes, clarity dawning and, with it, a new bout of anger. "You think I'm here for you."

Percy's cheeks flush, but he says nothing.

"I'm here for _me_, Perce." Oliver tells himself that the croak in his voice is from shouting, or screaming, or even uncontained rage finding its way into his speech, but he knows better. Knows his voice is breaking because this is all getting to him, becoming too much. "I'm here because I need to know why. Or how. How could you turn on us all? Why? Why did you do it?"

"I didn't think it would - I didn't think." A beat of silence. Oliver stares hard at the colour rising on Percy's neck, but doesn't look him in the eye. "I never meant to hurt anyone. You have to believe me."

"Your family, Percy," Oliver says. Before he can say anything more, Percy responds.

"I know. I know how amazing they are and how much they helped during the war, and I never meant to leave them." He sighs a weary sigh. "You don't understand. It was - difficult. I firmly believed in Scrimgeour and to think he was just using me - you know how hard I'd worked, Oliver. How much I wanted to be recognised in my own right."

"We recognised you." Percy's head snaps up, his gaze flying from the grass beneath their feet to Oliver's face. "You just didn't care."

Percy nods. "I didn't. And I see that now. I truly am sorry." He shakes his head, eyes closed, as if trying to shake the bad memories away. "When the new government came in... I knew it was wrong. I suspected things weren't right, but they'd been in my ear too long. I didn't know who to trust anymore." Oliver watches him struggle to swallow, a lump in his throat obstructing his words. "I knew I'd buggered it all up with Mum and Dad. Didn't think they'd want me back, if I'm honest. I'm lucky they're as good as they are," he says sadly. "I don't deserve them."

"No," Oliver says coldly, regretting it even as he says it. His voice thaws immediately, his shoulders slumping slightly. "You could've come to me, Perce. I would've helped you."

"I was in too deep," he replies, shaking his head again. His brow furrows and Oliver does not recognise the look in his eyes, one of confusion and fear and far away horror. "I was cracking up in there. I trusted everyone and no one all at once. I thought I was going to be stuck there, going mad, until - until the Battle."

Fred's freckled face jumps into Oliver's mind unbidden. It's a happy face, a laughing one, with an identical one at its side laughing just the same. Oliver feels sick again, his heart sinking. "I'm sorry about Fred," he murmurs, offering Percy this first sign of kindness. "He was a great lad."

"Me too," Percy says quietly. "I'm sorry for George more than anything. Doesn't know what to do with himself."

"Well," Oliver says, "that's to be expected, isn't it? What do you do when you lose half of yourself?"

Percy regards him for a moment, looking for all the world like that eleven year old boy that Oliver called his best friend. "I don't know," he replies.

A quiet moment passes in which Oliver listens to the far away sounds of people somewhere on the grounds and glances up at the grey clouds. He's not sure he has anything else to say.

"How's it been at home though?" he asks suddenly, an image of a grief stricken Mrs. Weasley forming in his mind. She'd been devastated when Percy left - he can hardly stand to think what she's like now.

"It's - awful. Mum just cries all the time. Dad doesn't know what to do so he just sits there and makes tea and goes on these endless walks," Percy says. "I think he doesn't want to cry in front of us. Needs to be strong and all that."

"Yeah," Oliver exhales. A question perches itself on the edge of his tongue, and he hesitates before asking, if only because he didn't come here for this. He didn't come to hear Percy's side. He came to be unapologetically angry, and yet here he is, feeling compassion rise within him like a rushing wave. He asks anyway, because it's still Percy, and they had been best friends once upon a time - could be again, one day. "And you? How are you feeling, Perce?"

Percy's lip quirks in a bad imitation of a wry smile. "Shit," he replies. "My little brother is dead."

Oliver clears his throat. "I know, I just meant - "

"It should've been me." Percy's face has gone very pale, his freckles stark and many. "I don't fit in with them the way he did. They wouldn't have missed me as much. It should've been me."

Oliver's stomach plummets. "Don't say that."

He watches Percy's face contort angrily, his lips twisting into a cruel smile. "Are you telling me it's not true? Don't lie, Oliver. You know as well as I do that Fred was more Weasley than I'll ever be. I should've just - "

"Should've what? Seen it coming? You're not psychic, Perce. If any of us could've stopped it, of course we would've. But we couldn't," Oliver says. He takes a step forward, suddenly very aware of his body, his limbs awkward and loose. He places a hand on Percy's forearm. "Your family loves you. No one should've died that day. No one."

Percy looks down at Oliver's fingers around his wrist. "Do you think you're the only one who gets to be angry?"

"What?"

"My brother is dead," Percy hisses. "My baby brother is dead. I did some stupid things but I get to be angry too. And I am angry. I'm fucking furious."

"Percy - "

But Oliver's words of comfort die in his throat when Percy looks up at him. The whites of his eyes are pale pink, tears threatening to spill over onto his cheeks. His lips are pale and thin, and he looks so, so broken.

"It should've been me," Percy says, but this time he doesn't sound angry. Just defeated.

Oliver finds he has no more words to say - he's not entirely sure he could speak right now if he wanted to - so he does the only thing he can. He pulls Percy into a tight embrace.

Almost instantly, Percy sags into him, relief and grief making him unable to stand up straight any longer. His arms wind tight around Oliver, his face shoved into the collar of Oliver's robes. All Oliver can hear is Percy's heavy breathing. All he can think is _please don't cry. Please. _He's not even sure who the thought is directed at anymore. He swallows and it feels like glass is caught in his throat.

"Oliver," Percy whispers. That's it, no more, just _Oliver_.

"Yeah?" Oliver says, voice oddly croaky.

Percy pulls back from Oliver's embrace, just far enough so that he can look at Oliver's face. "Thank you." He stares into Oliver's eyes for just a second, and before Oliver has time to react, Percy's lips are on his.

There is a moment of blind panic, where everything is far too bright, even the freckles splattered across Percy's face, which is so close to his right now because they are _kissing _and, Merlin, w_hy is he kissing him back?_

Oliver pulls away. He works his jaw uselessly.

"I'm - I'm not gay," he stammers quietly, Percy's arms still around him. His body is frozen, shocked and confused, but a distant part of him notes that this doesn't feel wrong or disturbing, just...strange.

"Okay," Percy says, smiling oddly. "Me neither."

He leans forward again, slowly, and this time Oliver lets him find his lips. Heart hammering, he kisses him back, understanding this time what they've been doing all these years - they've just been building up to this, haven't they? The nagging thought of t_his is Percy what are you doing_ echoes somewhere in the back of his head, along with the silent siren of _NOT GAY_ that he is finding it far too easy to ignore, but he can't bring himself to care. Right now, Percy is here, and he is warm and solid and comforting in a way that flying can't be, fixing Oliver in a way that solitude can't.

"I never meant to hurt you," Percy whispers for what feels like the thousandth time, his damp lips grazing Oliver's. "You have to believe me."

"I do," Oliver croaks, marveling at how he can feel every breath of Percy's, how each word feels just like it sounds as Percy's lips brush his. "I'm sorry. I am."

"I'm sorry, I was stupid. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

"No more apologies," Oliver says, looking into Percy's blue eyes that are so very _there_, closer than he's ever seem them, and have they always been so - so _pretty_? "Okay?"

"No more apologies," Percy agrees, and kisses Oliver once more, his hands threading throughout the hair at the base of Oliver's skull.

There are so many things Oliver still wants to say - his anger has been building and brewing for years - but he pushes Percy backwards instead until they both crumple, still joined at the mouth, to land on damp May grass. He pulls at Percy's hair and bites at his lips and nips at his neck and feels himself let go of the iron grip he held on his fury, his betrayal. Who knew this could be so cathartic?

"I hated you," he growls into Percy's mouth, one hand cupping his cheek. "Sorry. Forgive me. I'm sorry."

"No - more - apologies," Percy pants. He's propped up on his elbows, stray blades of grass in his ginger hair, lips kiss-bruised and eyes far too bright. Oliver pulls back from him for a moment and just looks as Percy's chest rises and falls, his entire face flushed pink. "Remember?"

"Yeah," Oliver replies, voice soft as silk. "I remember."

Percy gives a small smile and Oliver's heart leaps. _Well, that's new, _he thinks amusedly, and lets a low chuckle, shaking his head.

"What have you started?" he says, half to Percy and half to himself.

"I'm not sure," Percy mutters back, "but here's hoping it doesn't end for a very long time."

"Unless you start acting the prat again," Oliver replies, only half-joking.

"Here's hoping," Percy repeats firmly, and leans forward to capture Oliver's lips once more.


End file.
